Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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How Roman Polanski and Jonathan Demme Blur the Line Between Fiction and Reality
One of my favorite TV shows — and one of the best TV shows of all time, I’d argue — is “The Larry Sanders Show,” a sitcom that ran from 1992 to 1998 on HBO. Created by and starring comedian Garry Shandling, “The Larry Sanders Show” was a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional late-night talk…
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My ‘Birthright’ Trip to China
After a 20-minute wait, the cab finally arrived. My sister, Sarah, and I hustled into the car, grateful to be off our feet and away from the dimly lit, humid streets of Xi’an, a city in northwest China. It was nearly midnight, and the karaoke hall we had just exited had already blocked off the…
The Latest
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Why Tom Rachman Imagines the Child in the Corner
Before he started writing, novelist and journalist Tom Rachman had a peculiar visual image: A child being led into a room with a couple of adults who pay no special attention to her. The person who brings her there leaves, and the child sits quietly in a corner. As the hours pass, it becomes clear…
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Riots Break Out After Bank Loses Money
1914 • 100 years ago The Bank With No Money A wild riot took place last week on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in front of Yarmulovsky’s Bank on East Broadway and Essex Street, after depositors discovered that the bank had no money for them. The police made multiple arrests after rioters attempted to break down…
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Music Ladies Night With Bulletproof Stockings
An all-female, all-Hasidic rock band? Alright! Throw in an all-women crowd, and you’ve got the Bulletproof Stockings show which took place at Arlene’s Grocery last night. After several unsuccessful attempts, in which venues have backed out last minute, Bulletproof Stockings finally managed to showcase their music and let their hair down (figuratively, as all band…
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The Forverts Calls For Demonstration by New York City Socialists
1914 • 100 years ago Forverts Calls For Demonstration More than 10,000 demonstrators showed up to protest the tyranny of capitalism that is responsible for a blood-drenched war. They were prodded, in part, by an editorial in the Forverts requesting the presence of all socialists to attend a protest meeting in New York City’s Union…
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How Military Photos Testify to Our Place — in World War II and Gaza
I’ve been thinking a lot about photographs lately. No, not selfies, but the black-and-white images of people, usually of family members, that stand stiffly at attention on a mantelpiece or on a side table in the living room. Neatly contained in a frame fashioned out of wood or metal, these pictures infuse domestic space with…
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Music Hasidic Rock Band Takes to Stage — No Men Allowed
Bulletproof Stockings // Facebook It isn’t everyday that Arlene’s Grocery hosts a show for women only. But that’s what will happen Thursday night when the all-female Hasidic rock band Bulletproof Stockings takes the stage at the iconic Lower East Side venue. The modesty prohibition of kol isha states that Hasidic women cannot sing in front…
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Portland’s Jews Celebrate Century of Sephardic Heritage
They came from a collapsing Ottoman Empire, landed in New York and were sped on their way by Jewish agencies to the verdant Pacific Northwest. They arrived in Portland and built a small community that in many ways replicated the village and small city life they abandoned along the shores of the sun-kissed Mediterranean. These…
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Feeling at Home on the Range in Jewish Wyoming
The fences bordering ranches in Laramie, Wyoming are always dotted with tumbleweed, that pesky, thorny, seemingly dead bush that blows around the prairie, getting caught on anything in its way. It is an iconic symbol of the American West, but it is actually an imported species from Eurasia, named Russian thistle. Like the tumbleweed, I,…
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‘Magic in the Moonlight’ Isn’t That Bad and Neither Is Woody Allen
Back in February, my colleague Ezra Glinter said that because of the allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against Woody Allen, Ezra felt “tainted” writing about him, and warned that “when the next Woody Allen movie hits theaters,” he would not be able to separate the man from his art. Alas, Ezra’s savaging of Allen’s new…
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News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
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News A Jewish farmer drove 600 miles to rescue a century-old synagogue. Now he’s building a new one in a cornfield.
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Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
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Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish World How my grandparents met: a Yiddish-American romance
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Yiddish אַ טור פֿון דער אויסשטעלונג „מגילת־אסתּר אין דער רעמבראַנדט־תּקופֿה“ — אויף ייִדיש!A tour of “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” exhibit — in Yiddish!
אין דער אויסשטעלונג געפֿינען זיך 120 מאָלערײַען פֿון דער פּורים־העלדין, געמאָלט פֿון די האָלענדישע קונסטמײַסטערס.
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Fast Forward NYC Mayor Adams pushes controversial antisemitism definition as issue dominates mayoral election
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Opinion If Trump is being compared to Hitler, who was Hitler before he was Hitler?
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